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System Shock 2 returning to PC

All-time classic, System Shock 2, is set to be re-released very soon…

According to Flesh Eating Zipper, one of the PC’s greatest classics, System Shock 2, may be re-released very soon via gog.com by developer, Night Dive Studios, and it’ll work on modern PC’s. It may also appear on Steam in time, too.

System Shock 2 was developed by the now defunct Looking Glass Studios as well as Irrational Games, which obviously went on to develop spiritual successor, BioShock. However, long before Andrew Ryan’s underwater city of Rapture was committed to paper, System Shock, and the highly regarded sequel, System Shock 2, took players into a cyberpunk future, and pitted them against a tyrannical AI called Shodan.

The gameplay was very similar to BioShock, but was a little more complex, with more in-depth RPG mechanics, character development and a wider range of weapons and abilities. Psionic mind powers would become the inspiration for BioShock’s plasmids, and the survival horror element was far more prevalent in SS2 than BioShock, tasking the player to be far more wary of their ammo and supply levels, and it was often best to avoid confrontations. It was also a truly scary title, with amazingly deep atmosphere for a game of the time, and the story holds up to this day.

Sadly, up until now, re-releases have been out of the question due to EA owning the rights to the series and doing nothing with them. This is one of the reported reasons BioShock exists, as the original dev team couldn’t make a sequel, so instead produced the spiritual alternative.

Also, even if you own the original, it’s very difficult to get it to work with modern PCs, leaving many fans unable to revisit the classic sci-fi adventure. However, if EA has finally relented and is willing to re-release the game in a tweaked form for modern PCs, this will become one of the most essential purchases gamers can make this year. It’s a truly epic classic, and I urge those who haven’t already given it a go to grab it.